[AWT2_Sail]

Before you ask, I don’t have my running rigging set up in a way to effectively use a halyard on one of my primary winches as the main lifting force. I have smaller ones on the mast and coach top that also don’t work well.
So I’m putting together a 4:1 block system using 200 of 10mm rope described in an earlier post and I thinking about rigging it to a work safety or climbing harness instead of a bosun’s chair.
Any recommendations for such a harness, one suited to this block system? Or is a bosun’s chair a better option.
Thanks in advance.

 

[capttb]

I used a harness when younger but as I aged found the bosun's chair to be more comfortable and just as secure, ya can't fall out of one.

 

[pdqaltair]

a. You can't get as high over the masthead in a bosun's chair (the attachment point is high).

b. A harness can be quite comfortable IF you pad the leg loops, like riggers, arborists, big wall, and tower climber's do. Short climbing harness, for the local crag or gym, are not the right ones, but they are what most people use because they are cheap. But they can be padded.

I'm older, and have a modified harness that is quite comfortable, and impossible to fall out of, even inverted. I've never seen a bosuns chair that was UIAA and UN rated. All those I have seen are required to be worn with a secondary harness. If you have a line on one that is ISO/OSHA/UIAA compliant on it's own, please share.

(read top of page 3)

https://gallery.harken.com/gallery/38dea043-84dd-4633-9c1c-b83a720cddf6.pdf

 

[AWT2_Sail]

a. You can't get as high over the masthead in a bosun's chair (the attachment point is high).

b. A harness can be quite comfortable IF you pad the leg loops, like riggers, arborists, big wall, and tower climber's do. Short climbing harness, for the local crag or gym, are not the right ones, but they are what most people use because they are cheap. But they can be padded.

I'm older, and have a modified harness that is quite comfortable, and impossible to fall out of, even inverted. I've never seen a bosuns chair that was UIAA and UN rated. All those I have seen are required to be worn with a secondary harness. If you have a line on one that is ISO/OSHA/UIAA compliant on it's own, please share.

(read top of page 3)

https://gallery.harken.com/gallery/38dea043-84dd-4633-9c1c-b83a720cddf6.pdf

Thanks PDQ. Didn’t know that about chairs. What kind of harness do you use? I'm looking at this one: Safety Climbing Harness Rock Climbing Gear Rappelling Floor Escape Tower Climber | VEVOR US

 

[KayakerChuck]

I generally climb with both my rock climbing harness & bosun's chair.

The harness I already had. It's a pretty good climbing harness, and it's very secure. It's not comfy for any period of time. My boat came with a chair, which is pretty comfortable, but not secure. Both covers all the bases. It's what I have, and it works.

If I was buying something for going up the mast, it would either be a decent fitting, quality bosun's chair, or a tower harness or similar.

The VEVOR harness scares me. AFAIK, VEVOR is a company that imports generally low quality Chinese goods, takes some nice pics, and sells at a price MUCH lower than the real players in a field. Sometimes, this is fine- I have a few "Vevor" branded things. A harness is life support gear. I don't climb for real anymore, but I still regularly replace my harness with something made in the USA or Europe. Of course, this is only my 2 cents. (I run a canvas shop. I'm WAAY too familiar with different webbing, thread, and hardware choices.)

 

[cthoops]

We use an ATM Mastclimber. I’ve been up probably 1/2 dozen times in the past four years. It’s quite comfortable and works very well.

 

[pdqaltair]

The simple, comfortable solution is to take an inexpensive cragging harness and add padding to the leg loops by cutting large rectangles (~ 5" x 9") of stiff exercise mat foam and duct taping them on the inside the leg loops. Then, as long as you have something to brace your feet against (working without foot bracing from a mast ladder, steps, or ascender system just sucks--no leverage, ability to shift your weight, or to brace agaist swinging from wakes and waves) it is comfortable for long periods, or at least as long as I'll be up there before I have to come down for some other reason. No legs going to sleep because the pressure is distributed.

(I actually use the same harness climbing rock and ice. I just take the pads off and store them with the Mastmate.)

(Similar to what you see with Rescue and tower harnesses, but cheap and suitable for occasional use.)

(Brian Toss--why a bosun' chair is not always suitable.)

(And look how high the rigging point is on a bosuns chair. He can't get his head above the masthead. What good is that? A climbing harness should get you 12-16" higher, even higher if you have something to put you feet on and lean back (which you can't do in a bosun's chair). I can easily get bottom-of-ribs high.)

 

[bigdogandy]

I’m seconding @cthoops recommendation for the ATN mast climber with a bosuns chair, using a halyard to attach the ascenders to. With the mast climber I can stand up and usually get the top of the mast at about chest height, and a good bosuns chair like the Harken is comfortable, secure, and has decent storage pockets for tool and supplies.
And for the secondary harness I use a standard construction fall protection harness and have a buddy belay me with the harness attached to a spinnaker halyard ( or whatever spare halyard is available).
The construction harnesses are a little bulky, but with the attachment point high on your back if you do have a fall you won’t break your back when the slack comes out of the safety line like could happen with a harness that has the attachment point in front. Particularly if that attachment point is below mid-chest.
The harness i have is similar to this:

Kinda hard to tell from this pic because I’m not standing up, but I think you can see that this system puts a climber in a good position to see and work on things at the masthead. Comfortably, too.

And, as always, YMMV

 

[pdqaltair]

The purpose of the back attachment point is NOT to protect your back in a mast-type fall. This is a common misunderstanding. It is to prevent construction workers from falling backwards off a scaffold and hitting their heads. A mast fall is more like a rock climber's fall, and the front tie is the one you want, unless you want all of your teeth removed when you slam face-first int the mast or spreaders.

The back tie also lessons the chance of top heavy (overweight, no waist, probably should not be up the mast) climber from inverting and falling out of a harness (that no waist thing again). But rock climbers (reasonably fit, harness snug over the hip bones) never use this type of harness, and they take many thousands of falls every day, world wide. Heck, a busy gym could see 1000 falls on a busy day.

 

[pdqaltair]

I don't see how you get chest-high with a Harken boson's chair. Chin high. Or standing on pegs. Or very tall. With a climbing harness the attachment is at your waist, a foot lower.

 

[bigdogandy]

The purpose of the back attachment point is NOT to protect your back in a mast-type fall. This is a common misunderstanding. It is to prevent construction workers from falling backwards off a scaffold and hitting their heads. A mast fall is more like a rock climber's fall, and the front tie is the one you want, unless you want all of your teeth removed when you slam face-first int the mast or spreaders.

The back tie also lessons the chance of top heavy (overweight, no waist, probably should not be up the mast) climber from inverting and falling out of a harness (that no waist thing again). But rock climbers (reasonably fit, harness snug over the hip bones) never use this type of harness, and they take many thousands of falls every day, world wide. Heck, a busy gym could see 1000 falls on a busy day.

Hmmm….not to be argumentative, but I worked in construction for almost 40 years, and learning about and using fall protection and fall arrest systems was an important aspect of my daily life.
I would much rather have a rear facing attachment and possibly bang my face against the mast than be subject to the effect that a front facing attachment would result in as my body accelerates downward until the sudden stop when the slack comes out of the safety line that would certainly snap my back and neck into a curve they aren’t designed to make.

But, as I tried to indicate in my post, YMMV.

And in my experience it’s the combination of the bosuns chair and mast climber system that allows me to get over the top of the mast. I do it on a fairly regular basis working on my boat and helping friends on theirs.

 

[danvon]

Harness. No question. They’re made so that you can’t fall out of them and as others have noted, the attachment point lets you get higher. There’s a reason climbers use harnesses instead of some other arrangement.

 

[MikeOReilly]

We've used the ATN system for years now. We take our boat out every year, so we go up and down at least twice each year. I can't even count the number of times I've done it.

The ATN climber is really just a couple of climbing ascenders attached to a nice bosun's chair, so you could probably create the whole system for cheaper if you bought the components separately. But it just works, and only requires one halyard, although we usually use two: one to climb and one as a safety.

I can stand at the top and get my chest above the masthead. And the chair/harness is comfortable enough to sit up there for hours if I wanted.

 

[pdqaltair]

I like most experienced rock and ice climbers, have probably done 5,000 climbs (30 trips x 40 years x 4 per trip = as tall or taller than a mast, fallen on a rope and harness more than 1000 times (common to take many falls working a new route), and can't recall a single injury related to any of that. Not a bruise, not a skinned knee. A back tie would have been brutal many times. No gym or class would allow you to use a back-tie harness. Just sayin'. You will never find a case of a climber with a back injury from the harness, only from hitting the ground or a ledge.

The mistake you are making is not understanding how a seat harness moves on the climber and how it takes the weight. It shifts. In fact, you do not lean back against the belt when the tension comes on, you move down into the seat.

You cannot compare scaffold work to climbing and masts. I've worn OSHA harnesses a good bit in refineries, and they serve a completely different function. Apples and hand grenades are both round, but that does not make them similar.

 

[bristol299bob]

thats horrifying. (for me to watch anyway ... seemed "fun" for them though)

I have mast steps and plenty of halyards to go up. I am not a rock climber and I've never climbed in an industrial setting for work. I go up the mast 1 or 2 times a year. Does anyone have recommendations on a specific harness for an amature? Im guessing any name brand .. Petzl, Black Diamond ... but I dont have any experience to choose one.

 

[pdqaltair]

thats horrifying. (for me to watch anyway ... seemed "fun" for them though)

I have mast steps and plenty of halyards to go up. I am not a rock climber and I've never climbed in an industrial setting for work. I go up the mast 1 or 2 times a year. Does anyone have recommendations on a specific harness for an amature? Im guessing any name brand .. Petzl, Black Diamond ... but I dont have any experience to choose one.

Any name brand will be UIAA listed (check) so safety is certain. The important things are:

• Hang test in it at the store for fit. They should have a means of doing this. Try several. Mens and womens, for example, are quite different (the rise from the leg loops to the waist is greater).
• Pad the leg loops. Unless you pay many hundreds for a big wall or arborist harness, they will be padded for ease of climbing, not hang time comfort.
• Make sure you have enough waist that the harness cannot be pushed down, not even hanging upside down. If it cannot pass that test, you should not climb.

 

[MarkofSeaLife]

I prefer to pay someone to do my mast work.

 

[bristol299bob]

I live in a place where the highest elevation change is climbing the stairs to the coffee shop Not a lot of stores nearby to try climbing harnesses. But I can order a few from REI or Amazon and try them at home. There are a lot of sailboats in town and I think most folks in town do as @MarkofSeaLife which is worth considering for sure.

But for now, my plan is to climb the mast steps, with a harness attached to an ascender on the main halyard, and something like a GriGri(?) on the spare halyard. or maybe an ascender on both halyards? I slide them up as I go up, and slide them down on the way back to the deck. Is that reasonable?

As an amateur I can say that it feels "normal" to climb the steps, but it's a bit of a leap of faith to let go and hang! I suppose i'll get used to it.

 

[jdege]

I've never gone up the mast, and never intend to.

On my ketch the masts are on tabernacles, and I can raise and lower them single-handed.

 

[pdqaltair]

... As an amateur I can say that it feels "normal" to climb the steps, but it's a bit of a leap of faith to let go and hang! I suppose i'll get used to it.

You would be a novice. Amateur implies paid vs. not, and either can be experienced or not.

Feels safe and is safe are two different things. Consider...

• Is the halyard in good shape, meaning still stronger than 5000 pounds (you can relax because that is a BIG, well-proven safety factor)?
• Do the ascenders fit the line? If not, you will need to haul up a climbing line.
• Are the ascenders designed to be easily released and moved down, without risk of them unclipping from the line? Some don't easily release and others can unclip. Most ascenders were never designed for fall arrest. A Gri-Gri is neat, but requires some training.

If it's not comfortable and certain, just pay someone. Nerves alone can make it dangerous.